Mississippi Today
Gulf ‘dead zone’ is larger than average this year, the size of New Jersey
This year’s area of low oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico is larger than average, the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday.
The “dead zone” is approximately 6,705 square miles, as measured last week. Within NOAA’s 38 years of measuring the dead zone, this year’s assessment marks the 12th-largest area of low- to no oxygen, which can kill fish and marine life.
NOAA had forecast at the beginning of the summer that the dead zone would be above average. But the measurement announced this week is even larger than anticipated.
Experts fault upriver conservation efforts that are not keeping pace.
Scientists at Louisiana State University and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium
(LUMCON) conducted the 2024 dead zone survey aboard the research vessel Pelican from July 21 to 26.
The annual survey helps keep track of the progress made through the efforts of the
Environmental Protection Agency’s Mississippi River/Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force, a
state-federal partnership that is working toward a long-term goal of reducing the five-year
average dead zone to fewer than about 1,900 square miles by 2035.
Today, the five-year average – which accounts for extremely wet and dry years becoming more common with climate change – is 4,298 square miles, more than twice the Task Force’s goal.
The dead zone occurs every summer and is caused in large part by nutrient runoff from the
overapplication of fertilizer on Midwestern farms. During rains or flooding, water carries the fertilizer’s nitrogen and phosphorus from fields into the Mississippi River and its tributaries.
When the nutrients reach the Gulf, either from the Mississippi or the adjacent Atchafalaya River, they ignite an overgrowth of algae. As the algae dies, it decomposes and sinks to the bottom, depleting oxygen from the water.
When this happens, animals like fish and shrimp will leave. Some commercially harvested
species such as shrimp will concentrate around the edges of the affected area, forcing local
fishermen to travel outside the dead zone to cast their nets.
Bottom-dwelling creatures, such as clams and burrowing crabs, aren’t as mobile. They cannot leave the dead zone and will suffocate and die.
“The hypoxic zones lead to habitat loss for several ecologically and economically important
species in the Gulf: I’m talking about shrimp, menhaden and a variety of other species,” said Sean Corson, director of NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science.
In 2020, the Union of Concerned Scientists estimated the dead zone’s average annual cost in damages to fisheries and marine habitats at $2.4 billion. This year’s dead zone impacts a swath of marine habitat roughly the size of New Jersey, stretching from south Louisiana almost to Galveston, Texas.
Though the dead zone is larger than NOAA had anticipated with its early-summer forecast, it falls within the range experienced over the last four decades of monitoring, said LSU professor Nancy Rabalais, the co-chief scientist for the research cruise.
Still, researchers are never quite sure where the dead zone will hit hardest and what its size will be at the height of summer, said Rabalais. “We continue to be surprised each summer at the variability in size and distribution,” she said.
But the high five-year average is not surprising to most dead zone experts, who point upriver to the Midwest, where there’s been a lag in farmers adopting agricultural practices that reduce nutrient runoff.
“After nearly four decades of experience with the Gulf dead zone, it should be clear that we
can’t continue to rely on the same policy tools to manage fertilizer pollution and expect a
different result,” wrote Karen Perry Stillerman, deputy director of the Food and Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“Instead, we should demand a new approach, one that not only helps farmers to shift their
practices but also insists that they do so,” she said.
In June 2022, the EPA established the Gulf Hypoxia Program to support the work of nutrient- reduction programs. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law committed $60 million to support state-driven strategies to reduce nutrient runoff within the Mississippi River Basin. This funding will be spread across 12 states over the next five years.
A preliminary goal for the EPA’s Hypoxia Task Force is to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus
loads in the river by 20% by 2025. In May 2024, the U.S. Geological Survey found that while nitrogen loads had fallen 7% since 1980, phosphorus had increased by 22%.
Some experts have linked this excess phosphorus to wastewater from municipalities that don’t remove the nutrient from otherwise-clean sewage discharged into the river and its streams.
By the time the water reaches Louisiana, it’s already loaded with nutrients from upriver. So, from a lower-river perspective, putting more resources into efforts across the basin has helped, but further policy changes must be enacted soon to reduce the size of the dead zone, said LSU research scientist Doug Daigle, who coordinates the Louisiana Hypoxia Working Group.
Without changes to current nutrient reduction programs, the task force will be hard-pressed to meet its 2035 goals, Daigle said.
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Late and missed Medicaid rides triple the contractual limit in July
Six percent of rides provided by the company that coordinates Medicaid recipients’ transportation to medical appointments – or three times the allowable limit – were late or missed in July.
The company’s first report to the Division of Medicaid since assuming the contract for transportation services indicated that five percent of scheduled rides were late, and one percent was missed, said Medicaid spokesperson Matt Westerfield.
The company’s contract states that no more than two percent of scheduled rides should be late or missed each day.
For-profit, Denver-based Modivcare is working to lower the percentage of rides that are late or missed, said company spokesperson Melody Lai in an email.
“We utilize data and close partnerships with healthcare facilities, transportation providers, and members across the state to continuously improve service,” she said.
Modivcare, which began its three-year, $96.5 million contract with the state on June 8 of this year, scheduled over 52,000 trips with beneficiaries in July.
About 3,000 of the rides were late or missed.
Nearly 40,000 rides were completed after cancellations made by both Medicaid recipients and drivers in July. Thirty-seven trips took 45 minutes longer than average.
Modivcare’s contract mandates it submit monthly reports detailing late or missed trips, along with other information.
Despite filing a public records request, Mississippi Today did not obtain a copy of the company’s first monthly report. The Division of Medicaid indicated that the reports could contain proprietary, third-party trade secrets and that Modivcare had the right to obtain a protective order prohibiting the release of the records.
State Medicaid programs are required to provide rides to doctor appointments to health plan recipients. States can manage the benefit directly, provide the service through Medicaid managed care contracts or contract with a third-party broker, like Mississippi.
Modivcare subcontracts with local transportation companies to provide rides to beneficiaries. Late or missed trips are considered the fault of the transportation companies that provide rides to beneficiaries, Westerfield said.
Mississippi Today last month reported that a woman who uses a wheelchair missed four doctors appointments after Modivcare assumed responsibility for the service in June. She said drivers refused to give her a ride on two occasions because they did not feel comfortable securing her mobility device. On another occasion, Modivcare told her there were no available drivers with the capacity to transport a wheelchair. Another time, the driver did not show up to the location she indicated.
Modivcare’s contract with the Division of Medicaid requires that each wheelchair vehicle have a wheelchair securement device that meets American with Disabilities Act guidelines.
People with disabilities are some of the most frequent users of the service.
Modivcare has been penalized for a high volume of late or missed rides in other states.
The New Jersey Department of Human Services fined Modivcare $1.7 million between 2017 and 2022 for failing to meet its contractual obligations, including missing scheduled pickups, reported the Bergen Record. The New Jersey Legislature considered a bill in 2023 to establish performance and reporting standards for Medicaid transportation services, but the legislation died in committee.
This month, The Maine Monitor wrote that patients have reported missing appointments and being refused rides by the company, which provides transportation services to 16 counties in Maine.
In Georgia, Modivcare and Southeasttrans, another non-emergency medical transportation company, were fined over $1 million from 2018 to 2020 for picking up patients late, KFF reported.
Modivcare was the lowest bidder during the contract selection process in Mississippi. The agency chose it over Medical Transportation Management, Inc., the previous contractor, and Verida, Inc.
Westerfield said that when the number of late or missed trips exceeds the two percent threshold, the division works with the company to correct the issue. If the issue persists, the company will receive official warning letters and the division could choose to seek damages.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1968
Sept. 17, 1968
Diahann Carroll starred in the title role in “Julia” — the first Black actress to star in a non-stereotypical role in her own television series.
She grew up loving singing, dancing and performing in the theater, and she began modeling for Ebony magazine at 15. Three years later, she appeared on the TV show, “Chance of a Lifetime,” taking home the top prize for her performance of the song, “Why Was I Born?” That same year, she acted in the film, “Carmen Jones”, and appeared in the Broadway musical “House of Flowers”.
In her TV show “Julia”, her performance garnered an Emmy nomination for her, and she won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Series. Mattel even created a Barbie in her image.
After “Julia” ended, she returned to Broadway and Hollywood, earning an Academy Award nomination for her performance in the 1974 film “Claudine”. She went on to portray Dominique Deveraux in the primetime soap opera “Dynasty”. In 1996, she became the first African American to play the role of Norma Desmond in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, “Sunset Boulevard”.
Carroll devoted much of her time to the Celebrity Action Council, which works with women in rehabilitation from problems with drugs, alcohol or prostitution. Eight years before she died in 2019, she was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Favre loses another round in lawsuit agaisnt ex-talk show host
Former “Undisputed” host Shannon Sharpe remains undefeated in his defense of critical remarks toward fellow NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre.
On Monday, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request by Favre to resurrect a defamation lawsuit against Sharpe, who said on his Sept. 14, 2023, show that the former Southern Miss and Green Bay Packers quarterback stole funds from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families government program meant for those living in poverty.
Favre hasn’t been charged in the scandal in which six people have been convicted of state and federal charges involving $77 million in federal TANF funds.
In 2022, the state Department of Human Services sued Favre and many others to try and recoup the $77 million that was illegally diverted between 2016 and 2019. A year earlier, the department had sought to recover $1.1 million in TANF funds that Favre received for speeches he never delivered. (The speaking fees had come through the nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center.)
After a Sept. 13, 2022, article appeared in Mississippi Today, Sharpe said on the Fox Sports show, “Skip and Shannon: Undisputed,” that “Bretty Favre is taking money from the underserved” and that he “stole money from people that really needed that money.”
Favre sent Sharpe a letter, demanding a retraction and asking him to stop making any “further defamatory falsehoods against Favre.”
Sharpe refused, and Favre sued for defamation, saying that Sharpe had falsely accused him of serious crimes and hurt his reputation. Sharpe responded that his remarks are “a classic example of the king of rhetorical hyperbole and loose, figurative language” protected by the First Amendment.
A federal judge ruled in Sharpe’s favor, and so did the 5th Circuit. “Nothing in life or our law guarantees a person immunity from occasional sharp criticism,” 5th Circuit District Judge Leslie H. Southwick wrote.
Favre has paid back the $1.1 million, but State Auditor Shad White said in February that Favre still owed more than $700,000 in interest.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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